


A Lifetime or Two

by nigeltde



Series: A Lifetime or Two [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ghosts, Hurt!Sam, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Pre-Slash (ish), casefic (ish), hurt!Dean, season 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 06:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16738540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigeltde/pseuds/nigeltde
Summary: Dean's been living too long on the surface.





	A Lifetime or Two

**Author's Note:**

> In which the words good, fine, and okay reach levels of semantic satiation. Playing a bit fast and loose with the s12 timeline but set some time around The Raid. Title stolen from Joanna Newsom’s Only Skin. Extravagant thanks to [zmediaoutlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride) for the beta. Remaining errors mine.
> 
> This one's for [wetsammywinchester](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/pseuds/WetSammyWinchester).

Thirty-six hours clear of the shitshow that was supposed to be a simple ghost kill and under an hour from home, his phone rings.

The trunk creaks under his ass and he cracks his neck like that’s gonna relieve his headache and sighs, lets it buzz in his jeans pocket. Whatever it is, he’s too tired to hear it. It’s not Sam calling; when Dean looks, his brother is nodding down at someone inside at the counter, stack of chips by his elbow, waiting for Dean to finish up so he can pay. God knows who he’s found to chat so buddy-buddy with; the Pump n Dump crowd Dean knows fairly well, it being the closest garage-cum-junkyard to Lebanon, and none of them are really coffee klatch types. 

Sam could make friends with a corpse, though, he supposes. Technically already has a few times over.

Sam turns and catches him watching, eyebrow raised, entertained look on his face Dean can tell clear as day even through the grimed-up window and Dean shifts his gaze away across the rustbucket garden, face heating. 

Endless rings and they haven’t quit and he pulls the phone from his pocket and sees _Mom_ lit up and runs cold, stabs at answer and straightens so fast all the kicked-ass muscles in his back start up their moaning. He folds down again, whisps out, airless--

“Mom? Everything okay?”

“Of course,” she says, surprised. He breathes in relief, lightheaded. _Of course,_ like his phone calls are ever good news. “Hi, Dean, how are you?”

“Good,” he says. “I’m good.”

Overhead in the blue a Cessna drones, circling for the strip, sun spearing off its metal, pressing gradually lower like the sky is falling. He’s sweating. He digs his thumb into the top of his eye socket, pushing down the throb, and says, lamely, to fill the silence, how are you? at the same second she speaks up: are you boys anywhere near Arkansas?

She laughs softly in his ear. He closes his eyes. 

“Could be,” he says. “Just filled up the car.”

“The car,” she murmurs. “Well, looks like there’s something going down in Landing, on the river. A ghost, I think. I could use some backup.” 

“Of course,” he says, and stands again, car groaning underneath. “Yeah, sure.” 

The pump clicked off at some point; he hooks the nozzle and waves at Sam as Sam comes out, face still pinched with – amusement? annoyance? – and next to him is – Jesus, it’s fucking _Mike_ , what the fuck is _Mike_ doing here? _That’s_ who he was talking to?

“I’ll get into town around lunch tomorrow, you think you can make that?” his mother says in his ear.

“Yeah,” Dean says, slow, drag in his chest, watching his doom arrive.

“Dean!” Mike juggles a box of plugs in his hands and reaches out, square friendly face, square friendly handshake. Sam’s at his full height behind, mouth twitching at Dean over the top of Mike’s head and fuck it all to hell. He knows. Did Mike say something? Dean figured he was smarter than that.

“I could send you what I have in an email file,” Mary says, sounding a little unsure and Dean bends away and tries to focus on his mother; no, don’t worry about that, you can just tell us tomorrow, he says, and, we’ll see you then. He hangs up, returns her to his pocket.

“Mom,” he says to Sam, and Sam loses that smartass look in a hurry.

“She okay?”

“Yeah. Wanted to know if we could give her a hand.” 

“You said yes?”

“Course I said yes.” He looks across. “Mike.”

“That differential came in,” Mike says, and Dean nods. “And the grille, I’ve been meaning to call you.”

“Next week good?” 

“Sure.” Mike leans back on his heels, frowning. “You have a run-in with a brick wall or something?”

“Or something,” Dean says, abruptly glad he’s got his sleeves rolled down and the carpet burn doesn’t show. Flicks a glance at Sam but Sam’s no help. “So, ah. We gotta get going.”

“Mike was just telling me how hard it was to track down the grille,” Sam says. All conspiratorial like it’s a big joke. Dean’s not sure who the punchline’s supposed to be.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Mike shrugs. “Hey, are you gonna be okay?”

“Fine,” he says. No, is the real answer. What Dean needs to be okay is to get home and stand under a hot shower until the water runs cold, spend some time more than three feet away from his brother. Maybe even, miracle of miracles, out of line of sight. He needs some time alone. He needs to think. 

What Dean has instead is another five hour drive right back up the road he just came down, with a hundred stiff bruises on his back and Sam sitting, eternally, shotgun. And after _that_ he’s got their mother and another fight in the offing. On the river, too, so with his luck he’ll end up underneath a boat or something, treading water in the dark, waiting for a ghost to pull him under. Perfect. He can already see it happening.

Everything these days is just one long fight to keep his head above the surface.

::

“Mom was really all right?” Sam reaches turn down the music. Dean’s too tired to knock his hand away.

“Yeah; there’s spirit down in Arkansas. Wants some backup.”

“She’s by herself?”

“Sounds like.”

“And she wants us there tonight?”

“No,” Dean says. Lucky break, because he doesn’t think he could do it. “She’s en route too. Lunch tomorrow.”

Right turn and the junkyard swings out of rearview and they’re back on the state road. He winds his window up and settles into the drive, feels his shoulders unlock. 

“She say anything else?”

“Nope.” He glances over and sees the corner of Sam’s mouth turn down. “She said hi.”

“Sure she did,” Sam says, scrubs at his face and sighs. “Are you sure you’re up for it? How’s your back?”

“Fine. What, are you gonna dump me in the bunker and head out yourself?”

Sam smiles, small. “Guess not. Just thought you could do with a break.” 

“I could always do with a break,” he says, and Sam makes his _tell me about it_ face, hooks his elbow up on the back of the seat, tries to stretch his legs out. “You too?”

“I’m good,” Sam says. “I’m just. There’s a lot going on. I’m just tired, is all.” He looks it, circles under his eyes, stubble dark. Neither of them have caught up yet on that missed night of sleep from Lubbock.

Dean rubs at his mouth, swallows. “After this, I don’t know. We could take some time.” He lifts his shoulder, itch inside building. Feels Sam’s eyes land on him, heavy. “Hibernate.” 

A pause. “Yeah?” Sam says, guarded interest in his voice.

“Yeah, you know, I’ll have to. Work on the car.”

Sam laughs, for some reason. “Yeah,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to keep Mike waiting.”

Dean drums his fingers on the wheel. Goddamn it. And why did Mike have to say that at the end, anyway? _Nice to finally meet you Sam_? What did that mean? Was that a dig? Had Dean been – weird about Sam, or something?

Sam’s on a roll now, grinning. “That’s a big ol’ crush. Poor guy. You should have seen his face when he saw the car.”

“He likes the car.”

“Oh, I _bet_ he does.”

Dean’s jacket is on the seat between them. There’s a flask in it somewhere, and he rummages through one-handed, eyes on the road. Too many pockets, and Sam waiting for a response. “There’s no way he said anything.”

“Come on, man, give me some credit. I’ve been watching you break hearts since I was twelve.”

“It’s no big thing,” Dean says. Tugs his flask free and unscrews the cap, steering with his elbows, wincing at the pressure on the scabs, trying to keep everything steady, straight. “I know it hasn’t made a dent in _your_ nonexistent game, but staying in one place all the time has kind of dicked me over.” 

Silence from Sam’s side. Slight frown on his face and his smile gone cold. “Yeah,” he says, and the frown deepens. “I get that.”

“We just grab a drink sometimes at his shop,” Dean says, and Sam nods, face smoothing out.

“Right,” Sam says, light and even; there’s a pause. “You’ve been looking for that grille for a while.”

Dean takes a drink, sits with the taste a moment. Licks his lips. “Couple months, maybe.”

Sam makes a polite interested noise and looks out his window, knocks his knuckles in an arc on the glass. It’s fields. It was fields coming in and the same fields going out. It’s gonna be fields for a while. There’s nothing out there worth looking at. 

Fuck.

“Mike didn’t say anything.”

“No,” Sam says. “He did not.” He still won’t look at over.

“It’s not a big deal,” Dean says, and gets a whisker of nothing in response. Shakes his head. Reaches and turns up the music.

So that’s the last of the afternoon gone, then, lost to the most boring highway in America and a living quiet tension in the car that can’t seem to find any cracks to seep out of, and when Dean eventually pulls to a stop in front of a motel office he sits there for a minute, hand hanging off the key, eyes on the dash somewhere vaguely in Sam’s direction.

“All those times I went out where did you think I was going?”

Sam sighs, runs his hand through his hair. “I wasn’t thinking, obviously.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“I know,” Sam says. It’s not convincing. Dean shakes his head, face tight.

“If it’s the dude thing--”

“Jesus, no,” Sam says, too hurried. Dean narrows his eyes. “I just. Guess I thought you would have told me yourself,” is what he eventually comes up with. “But it’s fine, it’s cool. You do you, man. Have fun. It’s about time. You deserve it.”

He sounds sincere at the end there at least. Dean pulls the keys and stares out the windshield. This side of Tulsa they’re big into race cars it seems, going by the speedway checks decorating the motel sign and the Pixar copyright violation grinning between them. He sucks his cheek between his teeth and checks his phone, flashing with a message received while they were moving, the vibration eaten by the engine. From their mom. Name of a street, name of a diner. _Drive safe_ , she signs off. It’s a very mom thing to say, he supposes.

He angles it so Sam can see and Sam hums in acknowledgement. Dean sighs.

“Sam, there’s something I gotta tell you.”

“No, it’s okay,” Sam says, alarmed, straightening up.

“Don’t break out the wedding bells or anything.”

“Oh, Christ.” Sam scrabbles at the door handle.

“I’m getting my dick sucked on the regular by Mike from Mike’s Body Shop of Plainville, Kansas.”

“Good to know,” Sam says, disappearing out the door. Dean leans across the seat and shouts.

“I can highly recommend it.”

Sam scurries across the footpath, hasty scarecrow limbs, and into the office, digging for his wallet, shoulders hunched; checks his phone, discontent, as the clerk copies the information of one Mr Percy Pancione. Answers a question and points at the car, and catches Dean watching him. Stares back an extra moment, unreadable. Dean looks away.

It’s late; skipped from day straight to a navy night, and Sam is a dark shadow in his dark jacket and jeans, waving at Dean _come follow_ as he walks towards their room. Dean idles behind, swerving slowly around kerbs and trashcans, the wrong way up a one-way alley between buildings. Sam is swinging the room key around his finger, around and around, trapping it in his palm and releasing it again.

A few months ago Mike cracked a bottle of Johnnie Red while they were looking over a V8 he was fixing up in the back room of his shop, and Dean ended up getting a blowjob out of it. It hadn’t rocked his world, but it had been fine. Good enough to go back for. 

It’s not that Dean would have lied to Sam outright and it’s not that he didn’t want him to know, it’s just that he never thought he’d really have to say. There’s a difference; there’d been a difference in his head anyway. Looking back he was just being chickenshit, pretending there was nothing to talk about.

So what; turns out he’s not the only one.

::

Lunch in Landing AR is a main street diner and a bustling cramped affair, arranged around a circular table too small for Dean, let alone his brother. Their mother they spot through the plate glass as they arrive, sitting, staring at the table, motionless. Her head lifts as the door opens and she jumps to her feet, brought to life. They elbow their way through to her like dodgem cars.

“Dean,” she says, raising her voice to be heard above the chatter, looking between them, that warm smile. “Sam.”

“Hey, Mom,” Sam says, waiting for her to sit again before he folds himself up into his chair. “How are you?” He’s been jittery all morning. Because it’s the first time they’ve seen her since that clusterfuck at the Brits’ compound or because of Dean, who can tell. Maybe it’s just that the closer they got to town the slower they had to run, traffic squeezing like a vice.

“I’m good,” she says. Her hair is even shorter than it was a month ago. She looks tired but well. She looks like she belongs to the world again, no longer seeing ghosts. “It’s good to see you boys.”

Dean tries to pull out his chair and has to wait for the server to squish past; and then a baby-Bjorned dad, towing a wailing toddler; and then the server again on her return trip.

“Little busy,” he says. 

“It’s like this everywhere. I already ordered, I hope you don’t mind, or we’d never see anything at all.”

“Good thinking,” Sam says, and she smiles. 

“Well, problem number one. There’s some kind of music festival at the fairground.”

“Lifelight,” Dean says, shifting, uncomfortable. His shin is getting intimate with one of Sam’s ankles. The chairs are tubular aluminum and the back rubs at his spine, forces him into a weird slumped pose. “Starts today. Could smell the Jesus eight miles out.”

Sam twitches a glare at him and darts a look around. Like anyone could overhear in this racket.

“Everywhere’s booked,” Mary says. “I found a king single with a cot and I was lucky to get that.”

“Won’t be the first time I’ve slept on the floor,” Dean says. Earns himself another pointed look from Sam but whatever, it’s Dean’s back, he can do what he likes with it. “Doesn’t even count as a problem. What’s number two?”

“Here you go,” says the server, swaying in. Burgers land in front of Dean and Mary. Some kind of deformed reuben in front of Sam, slaw hanging out the sides and a stack of leaves and fries sharing oil on the side. Sam’s smile wavers but he keeps it on.

“Salad, right?” Mary says, uncertain, and Sam nods, lighting up.

“Perfect,” he says. Dean raises an eyebrow at him and gets daggers in return.

“Problem number two,” Mary says, stacking fries under her bun. “It looks like we’re dealing with a river man.”

Dean blinks at her. “Like…a man who lives in the river? I thought you said a spirit.”

“A lot of men who worked the Mississippi back in the day died unquiet deaths,” Sam says. “Drowning, drunkenness, misadventure. Sometimes they’d sabotage each others’ ferries or steamers. You mean one of those?”

“That’s the one,” Mary says, and Sam grins at her and she glows at him and they mind meld over how exciting ancient history is. “They’re doing some work along the bank and the guess is that it’s woken something up. Three people have drowned in the last week. All men in their twenties.”

“You’d say that’s more than usual? Have to be a few kids to swim out and can’t make it back every now and then.”

“No one swims in the Mississippi, Dean,” Sam says. “It’s too dangerous.” Dean shrugs. No one’s a mighty lot of people and a fair few of them are dumbasses.

“Drowned in their beds, I ought to qualify,” Mary says, and takes a bite. 

“And you’re telling me that’s not normal,” Dean says, and Sam’s lips curl in a reluctant smile, and he kicks his boot against Dean’s under the table. Their mother laughs.

::

A block back from main street, with its petunias and cheery retro awnings and charming line of low red-brick storefronts, is the rest of the disintegrating city: baking, weedy, peeling. A few vacant lots near the diner have been given over to parking and that’s where they left the car.

Outside in the sun it’s busy, sidewalks full and the air heavy, salted peanuts and the earth-tang of the river. A knot of people surround a busker on the corner, pushing pedestrians out into the street. Some minivan warrior beeps at them, all to the tune of Free Fallin’ being yelped into an earnest acoustic grave and the heightened wholesome buzz of collected clean-cut youth. It’s hideous.

Around the corner, dodging strollers, Mary says, tossed off and casual, “So. How have you boys been?”

He feels Sam next to him straighten up like there was a code in his down-twisted shoulders, his body telling tales out of school. Dean squints at the sky, doesn’t know what to answer. What does she want to hear? We’ve had about fifteen hours’ sleep between us over the last four days. One of us is 90% bruises and scabby carpet burn. Lucifer is free. Cas is AWOL. We’ve barely seen you. We don’t know who you’re with or where you are. We don’t know who you are. 

“We’re fine,” Sam says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and his shoulders pull down again. 

“But you were on a job?”

 _Ah_. How have we been means have you been working. That’s a familiar road at least. “Ghost,” Dean says, soccers an empty Grapette can along in front, tinny rattle and roll. It ends up underneath Mary’s truck. “Easy as breathing.”

“You’re not moving like it was so easy.”

“I got attacked by a staircase, you know how it is.”

She nods, wincing. “You okay? Anything I can do?”

“I took care of it,” Sam says. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. “I’m good. He, ah. Like he said.”

“Of course.” She raps the hood. “So, meet at the coroner’s?”

Sam nods, claps her on the shoulder goodbye.

“Hey,” Dean says, pausing by her truck, resting his forearm on the roof, the metal a hot band through his sleeves. “How’d you come across this one anyway?”

She looks up from where she’s fishing in her pockets. Guilt hiding behind a prideful refusal to be guilty and a smile twists across Dean’s face. 

“Men of Letters, right?” he says. Feels Sam’s lack of a flinch. “Man, those Brits got a finger in every pie, huh?”

“They know what they’re doing. It’s a real job,” Mary says, and Sam clears his throat and finishes off the rest for her:

“Real people are dying.”

Doesn’t make it any less dirty far as Dean’s concerned, but that’s life. Live in the dirt and find clean air where you can. Sam’s on board so he guesses he’s outvoted either way.

Still: “You okay with this?” he asks, once they’re in the car. Sam scrubs his palms on his jeans and looks out the window, his face hidden entirely. Their mother’s at the road already, waiting for pedestrians to clear the way, her truck rumbling loud enough that he can hear it. 

“Of course,” Sam says, out at the minibus parked next door. “We should work with them if it’s real work.” Dean looks at the back of his head, the stubborn kinks in his hair, curling over his collar, and thinks: _do you really imagine I believe you?_

“Yeah,” he says. “Hard to argue with a bunch of dead guys.” Sam huffs a breath and looks forward again. “Hey, it’s just another too big-for-his-britches ghost. Easy as breathing.” 

His phone buzzes. He expects his mom but when he looks at the screen it’s Mike. His stomach sinks.

_come by the shop next week when you’re better, the seals no good but I have some new ones_

“The last ghost nearly broke your back,” Sam says, thin. 

“What are you talking about, nearly,” Dean mutters. Another message: _Or I can bring them to Joe’s we can get a drink. Hope your ma is ok_

Something Dean hadn’t fully considered about fucking around with a local on a semi-consistent basis was that he’d poisoned the well. He’s gonna hang it up with Mike and that doesn’t just mean losing someone friendly with an above-average enthusiasm for going downtown; it might mean losing Joe’s Country Roadhouse and on top of that depending how Mike takes it the body shop as well. 

“What does she say?’ Sam asks, fidgeting. He can’t help himself.

“Nothing,” Dean says, and stows his phone and puts the car in reverse, backs away from the crumbling red brick vista and into the sun. Still pains him, turning to check behind, the deep ache in his shoulder, sore muscles where his lower back took the brunt of it. The first leg out of Lubbock he drove with a rolled-up towel at his back and he’s wondering if it might be worth busting it out again. So what if it makes him look like an old man, Sam can’t make fun of him: it was Sam’s idea in the first place. 

He flicks a glance over. Sam’s looking down at his own phone, spinning it between his fingers, sad set to his mouth; breathes deep and shifts his shoulders, firm, determined, settling something inside. Looks up and forward. 

Push it down and move on. Dean taught him pretty well, he supposes.

“Well, anyway, I’m putting you on research duty,” Sam says, as Dean weaves his way through the lot, sun beating down on the roof and glaring up off the road and people everywhere merry and light, never mind the vast fast-bearing mass of the river past the trees and the dead men and the fact that Dean’s brother might be halfway to a nervous breakdown.

“Come on man, I’m almost good as new,” Dean says, and earns himself a full-force _don’t even_ look.

“You’d get your ass kicked by a puppy.”

“I could beat up a puppy.” Dean jabs a finger at him. “Don’t you ever tell me I couldn’t beat up a puppy.”

Sam smiles, reluctant, shakes his head. Turns and reaches long into the back seat. Showoff. “Probably kill yourself just trying to catch it,” he says. Pulls his laptop over and opens it, starts tapping away. “Fall down a well or something.”

“Ah,” Dean says. “You’d fix me up.” 

The tapping falls silent a moment, picks up again. “Always do,” Sam says, and Dean’s chest swells, sore. His throat. He can’t look over there. He pulls out of the lot, shoves his way into the sluggish traffic. Going nowhere and in the chambers of his head Sam is saying _I took care of it_ and that echoes and echoes, as they slip the grip of main street and curve along the river road, freer. Weeds high and nodding behind chain link, gulls atop the power poles, upright and vigilant. 

“Hey,” he says, hesitant. “Are we good?”

“Hmm?” Sam looks up from his screen, bland mild confusion, wrinkle between his brows. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

“No reason.” Dean resets his shoulders against the seat. Sam screws up his face, embarrassed.

“Because I got weird about that guy yesterday? I’m sorry,” he says. “I was surprised. But I meant it, Dean, I don’t care. It’s great. He seems nice.”

“Right,” Dean says. “Good.”

“Good.” Sam smiles, nods, returns his attention to his screen. “Okay, okay. Acorn Avenue,” he murmurs to himself, cool, easy, craning his neck to read a street sign. Not a care in the world. “Turn up here past the bait and tackle place.”

Dean spins the wheel and they dip down and up again out of a sunken road, splashing through drain overflow, the wheels changing sound, leaving neat wet tracks behind. A kid bouncing a ball in his driveway watches them go, his dad shoving a mower across the lawn. They’re fine. Everything’s in order. 

Three nights ago Sam touched him.

::

Three nights ago in Lubbock. The memory is woozy, stuttered. He can’t lay it to rest.

There’s a good reason for the fact that he can’t get it right in his head, can’t put it where it’s meant to be, somewhere normal, and that’s that he got beat up to shit. On a ghost hunt no less, nothing more exciting than a salt-and-burn; but it’s familiar ground where you tend to get complacent. A widow’s new boyfriend dead, strung up in a tree; spooky sightings in the kitchen; cold spots. QED. 

Dean stayed in the house with salt and iron while Sam headed for the Catholic quarters of the cemetery. He’d kept the woman and her kid alive and managed to get his ankle grabbed in the process, dragged down a flight of stairs, twisting and sliding with his jacket shoved up and his elbows losing skin on the carpet and his breath slammed out of his chest. Gasping like a fish on the floor while the ghost leaned over him and fixed its fingers around his neck, eyes bugging and sunken-cheeked, rotten and bitter with jealousy before it had burned up in its own fury and Sam’s thrown spark, somewhere in the night.

It took him a while to get his breath back; to get anything back at all. The kid, six or so, who saw some of the worst of it and recovered the quickest, had tugged his hands until he was up and moving, helped him collapse against the couch in the lounge room. Her mother had cried a while into her own hair, quiet on the bottom step, sodden hanks hanging black through her fingers. Dean, on the floor still, blinking his way into consciousness, had accepted a pink and sparkling cup of orange juice and made the mistake of asking who the horse with the big hair was on the side.

Wasn’t long before he heard his car screech to a halt outside; creak of hinges, a slam, and then the front door thrown open. Dean had lifted his cup to his brother in acknowledgement; saw Sam’s relief, and saw him accept the mother into his arms, and heard him talking. Dean’s attention was corralled elsewhere.

“But she didn’t know." The kid had big eyes and was emphatic on the subject. “She kept saying she didn’t like it but the ghosts had to show her.”

Dean nodded. His back, like this, didn’t even hurt. The knock on his head was starting to tighten over the right side of his face, the pounding relocating behind his eye. He was still swallowing blood, having bitten his cheek. Give it five hours and he wouldn’t be able to move.

“And the purple one saved her from them.” His voice hurt, damaged. He touched the back of his skull gingerly, and she frowned at him, injured, and he frowned back and she shook her head and he shook his head and she said deliberate and aggrieved, like he was slow, “no, they were _helpers_.” 

“Oh, _helpers_.” Dean threw a glance over at his brother in mute appeal and saw them both watching, her wet-faced and exhausted with the pure relief of motherhood; and on Sam’s face was a look Dean had never caught on him before. Full and fond, aching: he’d met Dean’s eyes and Dean’s heart stopped. It made the room seem very small.

“Are you going to have your juice?” the kid said, pulling his attention away, brushing her bangs carelessly away from her face, alive, her bones underneath her thin soft arms intact, her bright eyes. Still in her pyjamas. “You can’t get up until you finish.”

“Is that the rule?” Dean had asked, and she nodded, so he did what he was told, sharp acidic sting on the inside of his cheek. It hurt to swallow. He wanted to throw up.

“Thank you,” he said, and she’d taken the cup back and headed for the kitchen. He watched her go and felt good about the night’s work. He’d be dead one day and she’d still have a whole life left. That was a victory.

“Hey,” Sam said, soft, standing seventeen feet tall next to him. “Up you get.” His big hand was hovering in the air next to Dean, held out and Dean had a floating dislocated thought, looking at it, that he was supposed to rest his forehead in Sam’s palm, and let Sam’s fingers wrap around, and have that be the frame of his world. It was a weird thought.

He closed his eyes. Things got worse, horizon lost and his elbows on fire. His head hurt. He said _Sam_ , rasping, and grit his teeth, and let Sam pull him up into the dark.

::

“Which motel are we at again?” Dean asks, as they push their way out of the county coroner’s and down the steps into the sun. He grabs the handrail tight and tries not to look like he’s easing himself along. He should have worn his lighter boots. He can hear his own bones creaking, joints like dry hinges.

All the visit brought them was the unique observation that white guys in their twenties with brown hair pretty much look the same. Sam had seemed satisfied to have the COD confirmed: suffocation, water in the lungs, and it was definitely river water, not sea or tap. It was marked to be sent off for some kind of testing for bugs or soil or whatever; pointless. It’s obviously local. 

Local water, local killer. Dean has just learned that people who go swimming and get into trouble can drown later on, outside the water, if they breathed enough of it in. That’s the official line, it seems: don’t go thinking the past is past.

“We’re at the Landing Inn, off the interstate,” Mary says, hitting the sidewalk, sun through her yellow hair like a halo before she fades into the shade. It’s the old end of town, the oaks tall and spring-fresh. They trudge underneath towards the road. The air is thick. Dean’s sweating already. His brother must be miserable. “You know, I think their river man theory was off the mark.”

“It’s a girl,” Dean says, and she nods at him, approving; glad he’s come to the same conclusion.

“A girl?” Sam frowns at them.

“Three young men, all dark hair, dark eyes, good-looking?” Mary nods. “That’s what my gut says. I bet they all have same reputation too. Sam, did you bring your computer?”

“It’s in the car.”

“Good. All right, let’s get back and figure this out. Follow me.” 

She steps up into her truck, swinging into the seat with her hand on the roof and an ancient deja-vu tugs at Dean’s feet, threatens to pull him under. Their mom’s all halos and their dad was all dark but there’s plenty they had in common, Dean is starting to see. Was that what they’d liked about each other? After the bounce and bubble of new romance, that they both were only business? Or maybe one learned it from the other. Back when he would have guessed she from him but now, watching her truck disappear, he’s not so sure.

They lose her quick in the traffic. Somehow she pinches through a gap, and leaves them jammed in the crawl: pinned on four sides by RVs, trucks, wagons. At the junction the whole lot of them try to cross three lanes en masse and slow becomes molasses and horns. Dean squirms in his seat, tries to relieve his back. Glances at Sam, who’s been frowning the whole time, flipping through reports, shuffling his manilla folders. 

“The research was solid,” Sam says. It’s his _I’m a reasonable person_ voice. 

“Except for getting the bad guy wrong.”

“Maybe,” Sam says. “We don’t know yet.”

“Definitely. They’re just a bunch of snooty book nerds with too much money. Getting high on their own farts. Screw ‘em, Sam.”

Tiny lift at the corner of Sam’s mouth. Dean reaches out and thwacks the back of his hand against Sam’s chest, curls his fingers at the glove compartment, gimme. Sam rifles through for the bottle, tips a few into Dean’s outstretched hand. 

“Thanks.” He swallows with a mouthful of warm Pepsi, grimaces, burps, brings a pill up again and almost gags. Sam snorts.

“How are you even still alive?” 

“Sometimes I wonder.” Dean sucks down the rest of the Pepsi and coughs. A headache unfurls at the back of his skull. It’s stuffy in here, air thick. Too much around him, moving too slowly. Just another wide sludgy river to drown in. 

Sam shifts, sighs. Cracks a window and then thinks the better of it when the fumes and humidity pour through. “How much longer?” 

“I don’t know, whenever John here decides to get his ass into gear,” Dean says, checking his side mirror. There’s a gap coming up on the inside. If his hesitant indicating is any signal of intention this could be John’s moment.

“John?”

Dean nods forward. In front of them is 1JON210, a blue wagon with handprints in the dust all around the hatch and a stack of bags in the trunk; a tent, something that looks like a badminton racquet. Jesus. John probably can’t even see out the back. Probably thinks he’s the only chump on the highway. La dee da, what a life to lead. 

“That’s a Bible verse,” Sam says, amused. “How can you have been doing this as long as you have and still not know your Epistles?”

“That’s what I’ve got you for,” Dean says, and scratches his eyebrow, clears his throat. “So what’s it say then?”

Sam looks back at it and frowns, pauses. Shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Useless,” Dean says. “Why do I even keep you around. I know what it is. John Two Hundred and Ten, And yea, Chuck said go camp in a field for mine glory, and listen to some crappy music, and share ye the lice of strangers, and get mud in the crack of thou ass.”

Sam laughs, down at the folders in his lap. Spreading warmth in Dean’s chest. The sharp turns of his profile, the creases in his cheeks. The way his hair falls. These are things Dean notices, despite himself. He smiles back.

“You liked that one?” he says. “I’ve got more.”

Sam chews his lip to hide the smile. “I bet you do,” he says, and Dean lifts his hand and sketches the shape of a verse in the air.

“I am a giant, tiny, whiny dick, sayeth the Lord.”

Sam throws him a look, wry. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“Thou shalt have no other dicks before me,” Dean says, grinning, checking his mirrors and stealing John’s gap right out from under him; Sam laughs, honest, easy, beating around the car, a shine that gets inside Dean, sparking. They’ve had a rough run, lately, and he’s let himself forget what it’s like to just drive in the sun with his brother by his side. If every day he had left looked like this, he’d count himself a pretty happy man. 

Wasn’t so long ago he would have said Sam felt the same.

::

The motel is squat and long, heavy flat roof overhang like a frown. Mary’s truck is in the room spot so he ends up having to park at the other end of the lot. They bring most of their stash in with them, just in case, the bags stuffed tight. Sam carries them, two in each fist. His one concession to Dean’s pride is that he lets Dean carry the remainders of their road snacks: jerky, Skittles, vines. Sam’s protein bars, oats and dust and apparently gold, for how much they cost.

The room is dark, low, and feels about two feet square, bisected by the bed, table and chairs crowded into the window. When they come through the door their mom’s on the phone.

“We’ll come and get it,” she’s saying, rolling her eyes. “Now, thanks, thank you,” and Sam thumbs in the direction of the office and she nods; he’s out the door even as she hangs up. 

Dean throws the bag on the counter, puts his hands in his pockets and kicks at the carpet, looks around. Above the kettle is a TV and a faux-retro print of a paddlesteamer. There’s a stuffed bass opposite, above the bed. Its eye has an unpleasant jellied gleam.

 _Moist_ , Dean thinks, shuddering, and the fish stares back at him, unimpressed. _You ain’t looking so hot yourself pal._

“Did you,” Mary starts, and hesitates; resignation in her voice: “find the place okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Right where you said it would be.” She nods. Outside the window Sam strides across the lot, tall and free in the sun. The two of them just stand there and watch him disappear into the office.

“How has he been?” Mary asks. “Really? I know that Bevell woman hurt--”

“He’s fine,” Dean says. What’s a burned foot and busted ribs between friends? “We’ve got that angel mojo on our side. Fixed him right up.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah,” is all Dean can think to say. An awful laughter clumps tight in his throat. All the times he’d imagined talking to his mother.

Funny how things turn out.

It’s a pretty dinky cot, Dean can tell even from this distance. Sam might be better off on the floor after all. Thin green mattress squished into the fold and the wheels useless along the concrete porch, spinning like a shopping trolley. In the end it looks like Sam just picks it up a few inches off the ground and walks it. The clerk trots behind, arms full of linen and pillows, her chin dug into the top of the pile. Sam says something to her, a flash of a smile, and she laughs.

“Does he--” Mary hesitates again. He waits her out, unease tight behind his ribs. As if he knows what goes on inside Sam’s head anymore. Why do they always come to him to interpret his brother? His dad used to do it to avoid another skirmish. What’s their mom got to be afraid of? What does she see when she looks at him? “Have anyone?”

Dean purses his mouth. “Well, there’s this chick,” he says. If Sam gave her half a chance she’d take it. The hearts in her eyes are like beacons.

Mary chuckles, slips into a private smile. “I see,” she says. She doesn’t. Maybe she had her own wildcat days, who knows. Maybe that’s her now. But it’s not Sam.

“No,” Dean says. Clears his throat. “That’s not – uh, there’s a hunter. Eileen.” He says her name cautiously, like it’s still too delicate a thing to say out loud. Sam hasn’t said anything direct but he’s got a sense that there’s a space there, a possibility, a whole life that could be lived. Dean’s trying to think of it like a good thing. “Maybe her.”

“That’s good,” she says. “A hunter.” She’s looking at him now, gaze heavy, he can feel it and it makes his skin crawl and he’s still looking at Sam growing near, ear bent halfway to the ground as the chick chatters away. “What about you?”

Dean sucks his bottom lip; shrugs, one-shouldered. “Nah,” he says, after a second. “Too late for me, I think.”

“You’re not that old.”

“Older than you,” he says, dry, raises an eyebrow, surprising her into a laugh, and she shakes her head, as shadows block the window briefly, and then the door opens and Sam carries the cot inside, effortless. He sets it by the bed, takes the linen with thanks, and shoos the clerk politely away.

Looks between them, standing next to the window in God knows what kind of awkward tableau. Straightens, quiet, like he knows they were talking about him. Twitch of hurt on his face, gone quicker than it came. He clears his throat.

“You two might be right about the girl,” he says.

::

The clerk’s cousin’s football buddy’s mother owns the town museum. Two weeks ago, reports Sam, a local tour operator had found an old diary, oilskin-wrapped and crackling with age, risen from the churned-bottom depths and trapped in some weeds.

They stand in front of it. Dean squints down at the page on display. The year is 1912. The day is Thursday.

 _Sunny_ , he reads. _Sorghum flowering early. Trixie had a stone in her paw and bit me when I tried to take it out! I was only trying to help and she was my friend again afterwards. Brendan was there too as he was taking a ‘breather’ from shearing and he helped me. 3 eggs from the clucks, 1 from the quack. Brendan O’Connor. Brendan O’Connor. Mrs Brendan O’Connor. Mrs Margaret O’Connor. Peggy O’Connor._

“Fifty bucks Mr Brendan O’Connor has dark hair,” Dean mutters, under his breath. They’re surrounded on all sides by tourists. It’s a pain in Dean’s ass. Who the hell under sixty spends a spring weekend at the Landing Historical Society And Museum unless they have a mystery to solve?

“This isn’t the last entry,” Sam says, fingers twitching. He wants to grab it and he can’t. The clerk’s cousin’s football-buddy’s mother seems overwhelmed by the influx and inherently suspicious of them all, standing on an apple box behind her desk, pinch-mouthed, eagle-eyed.

The group following them is unsubtly trying to elbow Dean along to the next display. A hat, spotlit in a glass case. Underneath it a set of...shears, or clippers, or whatever people use on farms. Just riveting.

“She was in love,” says Mary, quiet and low, taking a last searching look across the page. Sighs, presses her lips together into a shape Dean doesn’t recognise, on himself or his father or his brother or her father, even. Like she came from nowhere and is heading there too. “Poor thing. He broke her heart.”

::

In Lubbock, in the end, Sam had grabbed his hand and lifted him off the floor. Pulled him up limp like spaghetti out the pot and laid him across the back seat, his jacket off, every ice cube and frozen bag of peas they could scavenge from the house laid across his back. He lost a couple to the footwell on the way back to the motel, crumpling out of reach. Dean waved his hand down towards them, grabbing, futile, and thought in a slurry kind of way about how if forgotten on a hot day the peas might steam themselves right into something Sam could have for lunch.

At the dive they were holed up in Sam had lowered him into a rickety chair, his chest pressed against the backrest, and turned the heater on full, went searching for their kit, muttering under his breath. Full fuss mode. 

“I’m all right,” Dean ground out, ignoring that it hurt to speak. “It was just a couple of bumps.” 

Sam straightened from where he was rooting in the duffels and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Take your shirt off then.”

“Ah.” Dean rubbed his face. Folded his arms across the backrest and hid his face in his elbow. “Thinking I might sleep in it.” 

“Jesus Christ.”

“Love this shirt,” Dean mumbled, and winced as Sam pushed him upright and unbuttoned it, peeled it off him, folding back one arm careful and slow and then the other. Tossed it in the corner like bad news. Cool air hit the damp on Dean’s back where it had been covered in frozen stuff. Sam, standing behind him, probed gently.

“If you’ve broken anything I’ll--”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Confiscate your tape collection.”

“Cruel,” Dean said. Tried to look over his shoulder. It was a mistake. “Ah, fuck. Unusual. Unconstitutional.”

“Arms up, if you can.”

Dean could, sort of. Not much past the horizontal but it was a decent effort considering the circumstances. Sometimes you had to go looking for the win.

Sam pulled his undershirt up and over. Nothing sticky, none of that unpleasant peeling. Still, Sam hissed.

“Well? Bleeding?”

“Not outside of your skin,” Sam said. “At least on your back. Jesus, you look like a Monet.” Sam’s hand on his back was too hot, and he arched from under it. 

“Feeling a distinct lack of drugs, here, Sam,” he said, tight, and Sam huffed and went away, got something that rattled. “And don’t forget the booze.” 

Sam didn’t; let Dean take what he needed and fold himself back over the chair, hunched with his eyes shut until everything went a little fuzzy around the edges. Sam hovered around the edge of his awareness. Sitting, standing. At one point he pressed a glass of water into Dean’s hand but it was unpleasant to drink, warm and minerally. He put it on the table and wiped his mouth, stomach high and unwell.

“Are you concussed?”

“Bit late for that isn’t it?” Dean had said, and Sam snorted. “Fuck, this is a pain in my ass, Sammy. Tell me you killed it twice.”

“Three times.”

“That’s my boy,” Dean mumbled, and rubbed at his eyes, yawned big. His ears popped. “Why is it so bright in here?”

“Because I need to take a look at your elbows. Show me.”

Dean held up his wings. The effort pulled deep in his back but it was dull and remote now. Sam pressed his lips together.

“Well,” he said. “You’ve had worse.”

Water and cream; it wasn’t too bad at the start, but the burn that towed in the wake of Sam’s fingers took his breath away, all his nerves hollering. Dean got back to drinking, jaw set hard against the sting. Stared at the white goo Sam dabbed on and toyed with making a joke; thought the better of it when Sam knelt by his chair and started on his boots.

It was weird to see him do that, tug at Dean’s feet like they belonged to him, strong supporting hand under his calf as he pulled the first boot off by the heel. It was – it got to Dean. It made it hard to breathe. It meant something. 

“Sorry,” Dean said, voice thick, swaying. Choppy waters. Put his hand on Sam’s head for balance and felt his brother freeze and shudder back into movement, his own stomach hurting: not safe, not safe, and he shifted his hand to Sam’s shoulder. Sam flashed him a glance, a quick awkward smile, and got started on the second, made Dean roll forward.

“What are you saying sorry for,” Sam said. “Did you do it on purpose?”

“He got the drop on me.”

“He wasn’t the first and--” ironic tilt of his head-- “he won’t be the last. Nature of the game, Dean. It’s fine.”

There was a fight happening in Dean. It wasn’t fine, he wanted to say. But they were here, weren’t they? What other yardstick was there? In the end he just shrugged and cracked his jaw yawning again, eyes screwed tight. When he opened them they were bleary and wet with tears.

He blinked down at Sam and tried to see him right. Sam’s hand was still on his knee. He was looking up at Dean. He had a dark red shirt on and he looked good. Even with bruises under his eyes, skin stretched tight over his bones, he looked good.

Sam dropped his gaze. “Come on, soldier,” he said, and squeezed Dean’s knee and rose. “You can’t sit here all night. You think you can stand?”

“No,” Dean said. He was too stiff to move. Sam got him up anyway and over to the bed

“Lie down,” he said, heading for the door, and paused when Dean got a knee up on the mattress. “Take off your belt, come on. I’ll be back.”

Dean fumbled his way through it and finally eased himself down to the mattress, front first. He was nearly out by the time Sam returned; lifted his hand a couple of times limply when the door opened again, letting a wedge of amber into the room. When had the light gone off? 

“Great,” Sam said. “You’re gonna be snoring like an old man tonight, aren’t you?” 

“You’re an old man,” Dean grumbled. Sam huffed, amused, and that made him smile into the pillow. He felt warm. His fingers were tingling. He felt like he was in a good place. He closed his eyes. “What is it with ghosts anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come back to life and all you do is go around strangling someone. You know who does that?”

“Uh, everything?”

“Assholes,” Dean mumbled. “You know what, you get a chance, you come back, you get a second shot--” he scratched his nose against the pillow, itchy fabric, his skin smearing around. His mouth was dry but asking for a drink was beyond his ability. 

“And?” The mattress shifted as Sam sat by his hips. Weights settled on him, one under his shoulder, one lower by his side. Full and firm, a deep numbing cool. “You get a second shot?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” The weights shifted a little, Sam moving, adjusting. His elbows were sore. He drifted. When he came back the ice was gone and Sam was spreading some of that shit-smelling muscle-healing goop he’d always kept around, too much lavender to try and mask how foul it was. It wasn’t working, Dean wanted to say, it never did, but his tongue was too woolly. And Sam’s fingers felt nice, sliding smooth, across and across, down one side of Dean’s spine and then up to the other and down again, and that had gone on a while; a real long while, even in places where he didn’t have bruises. Time all fogged over like the light and at some point the heater started ticking.

Loose fan, Dean thought, ticks like heartbeats, boneless, melted into the mattress. Tomorrow he would be awake and so stiff they wouldn’t be able to leave for a day; tomorrow he would be made of deep worrisome aches and he would stand under hot beating water until he could stand no longer but tonight the dark pressed down on him. He was sunk. And maybe that was the weight of Sam’s hand, too, still now for an age, resting on his back at the widest point. Dean counted ticks waiting for him to move and ran out of ticks. He breathed, felt his chest lifting Sam’s hand, and ran out of breaths.

He went under. In a dream, shadowy, time-skipped, Sam’s hand ran up his back, rested on his neck; pushed softly into his hair, rucking and then smoothing. His thumb traced light along Dean’s cheekbone, his cheek. He touched the corner of Dean’s mouth; he touched Dean’s bottom lip, grazing across, faded and tender. 

Dean lifted into consciousness like the tide, swayed as the mattress tilted his world. He cracked open his eye with his lashes chafing across the pillow and saw Sam’s head bowed, turning away. He looked sad. He was leaving; just Dean, not the room, his shifting presence still felt, slumped into a chair, or standing at the window, or stretched atop the other bed, phone in hand. Awake, watching over. 

Dean slept. In the morning, pummelled by the shower, clouded in white steam, he thought, unsteady, his toes curling, his heart sore, his thumb at the corner of his mouth chasing phantoms: that wasn’t a dream.

::

They’re waiting, now, on midnight, or later; for the main street to empty and the dribs and drabs to finish trickling away from the fairgrounds, the cops and crowd control to scatter back to their nests. The village green preservation society is in the dead centre of town and the last thing they need is to catch someone’s eye.

Late night TV in Landing is the usual desert. They have it on mute. There was something about weddings, before; now it’s a local boy pulling catfish out the river, the camera rolling with his efforts, amateurish, nauseating. He clubs a three-footer and holds it up, grinning. Its whiskers droop miserably, like it knows it’s destined to get stuffed and stuck on a motel wall for the rest of eternity, staring at strangers fucking. What a way to go.

They ate light and early. Dean napped a while with his boots on, and then gave up ownership of the bed to his brother, pulled a chair around in front of the bathroom so he could see the TV without twisting his back too much. Sam has a mood stewing, stretched out long with his ankles crossed, staring at his laptop and making a show of clicking something every now and then. Maybe he thinks he’s fooling their mother. 

She’s at the table putting edges on things. Daggers, knives, a couple of little pigstickers. A straight razor. Something nasty, curved and Indian-looking. A whetstone grind fills the room. She doesn’t talk much. She flicks little looks at Sam, when she thinks she can get away with it. Probably doing the same to him, and he just hasn’t caught her.

It’s warm in here, even this late, even with the window open. The curtains are drawn almost closed and baffle the breeze. Sam, in the corner of Dean’s eye, is down to his v-neck and sweating still, shine on his neck, his hair lank. His arms are long and bare. He’s always run hot. 

It makes Dean restless.

He’s not used to being cooped up in a single, humid and close, the three of them verging on bumping elbows. He dodges the cot, folded and bulky, blocking the closet. Makes coffee, stirring down cheap watery creamer, leans on the bench and drinks. The fish eyeballs him. Underneath the fish Sam stares beyond his screen, pale in the white light, discontented lines on his forehead. 

“What are you looking at, broody?”

Sam shoots him a bitchface, scoops his hair behind his ear and turns the laptop around. There’s an army portrait of some kid, ghostly-solemn as they all look. Dark eyes. Dark hair, probably, under his hat.

“That’s him? O’Connor? What, he drowned?”

“Nope, the flu. Dead in 1918,” Sam says. “But there is a Margaret Paxton who drowned here, 1912. Suspicious circumstances. Fourteen years old.” 

Dean curls his lip.

“She didn’t even get a chance,” Mary says, tired, heavy. Everything she does is heavy, a fraction delayed. Her smiles, her thinking, her work. Like she’s fighting a current. Dean had thought this morning, seeing her in the sun, amidst the buzz of a diner, that she was with them, fully and finally, but she’s not. Maybe she never will be.

He shouldn’t have expected more.

“Where have you been staying?” Dean says. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

She wipes a blade off and slides it into a scabbard. “Here and there. Nowhere in particular. They keep me moving, so. How have you boys been?”

“Fine.” Dean sucks his cheek between his teeth; a sweet bite of pain. It’s still healing. They’ve been with her pretty solidly since she asked that exact question twelve hours ago. 

“You know,” she says. “It was so nice to see the Impala today. Did I tell you how glad I was that you kept her?”

“Yeah.” Dean scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, you remember, we were talking about how the back passenger window used to rattle--”

“That’s right.” She smiles, absent, remembering. “Dean you dropped...I forget what it was down there and it messed with the mechanism. You used to press your face against the glass, do that...blowfish thing. There’d always be smear marks and snot. Your dad would be out there with a cloth every night, cussing.” 

She fades out, fiddling with the buttons on her shirt. Sam’s lost his pissy expression; careful hope on his face as he watches her. It makes him look like a kid. He needs to shelve it, stop dropping his guard.

“It doesn’t rattle any more,” Sam says. “Dean fixed it,” but Mary’s moved on.

“Do you ever go back to the house?” she says. Sam darts a glance at him and sits up slowly, shuts his laptop and puts it aside. “In Lawrence, I mean?”

What other house could there be? They only ever had one. “I,” Dean starts, and clears his throat. “We--”

“A long time ago, we went back,” Sam says. “There was a new family in there. They rebuilt upstairs.” 

“I know.” Mary nods. “I went past.”

Irritation crawls up his spine. He’s sweating. Flounder up on the wall continues to judge him and he abandons his coffee, pushes up and heads for the bathroom, wedges the little jalousie window open. A scrape of air wafts through and does nothing to cool him down.

“How was it?” Sam asks. Gentle. Picking up his slack. Dean sets his hip on the basin and folds his arms.

“Different,” she says. “I thought I would be...I don’t know. But I was glad. That there was another family. We were happy there. I’m glad that didn’t die with us. With, well.” She bites her lip. Looks at Dean like she needs a response but he can’t. He doesn’t know what she wants from him. He’s no good at talking about this shit. “Tell me if I’m right about something.”

Sam, again running interference: “What?”

“You went back because there was a haunting there.”

Dean checks his watch. “It’s midnight,” he says. They don’t care.

“Yeah, there was,” Sam says, leaning in, legs folded under, earnest, open. “But it wasn’t you. Actually. You, your spirit. You saved us.”

There’s no shift on their mother’s face to hear she got trapped in this place, a murder, unquiet. The end of the world. Dean grits his teeth, turns away down to the sink and splashes water on his face, blots against his sleeve. 

“I’m gonna go for a walk.”

Mary stands, a shadow against the window, uncertain. “Dean, oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Dean says, tries a smile, awful. “I just need some air.”

Outside it’s dark; couple of yellow islands pointed down on the sleeping cars, and the suspended streetlight string along the highway. Dean kicks a circuit around the edge of the lot; pauses at the car to grab a bottle of water and toss back a palmful of Tylenol. The lights haunt him. Between the office and the room block is a dark alley, breeze channelled through and he sets his back against the warm brick, pulls his flask, looks up. Watches the stars wink in and out. He’s such a goddamn baby around his mother sometimes. It kills him.

Footsteps. Sam, he knows, long before his brother rounds the corner.

“She sent me to find you,” Sam says. Leans opposite, hands in his jeans pockets. Broad. Shirt tight around his arms. Dean takes another drink, wipes his mouth, digs his fingers into the cord of his shoulder where it’s knotted, aching. Sam’s watching him. “You okay?”

Dean nods. “How was story time?” 

“Finished after you left.” There’s a long pause. His brother doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to fetch him back. Kicks the ground a couple of times, digs his heel into the brick behind him, knee bent. “She likes you better.”

“Come on, don’t,” Dean says. “That’s not true.”

“She always...it’s always you.”

“She was asking me about you earlier, it’s not like that. She just doesn’t like to be, direct, or something, I don’t know.” Who the hell knows. Between her and his brother maybe he should just give up on knowing entirely.

“I’m not blaming her, Dean. It’s just how you are. The way you...” Sam shrugs, smiles, tight. “You’ve got her.” He kicks the ground again. “You’ve got Mike.”

Dean rolls his eyes. Mike, he’s so sick of Mike. “No one’s _got_ anyone, I told you--”

“--it’s not a big deal,” Sam says. Picks at something on the front of his t-shirt. Flicks a glance up. “He look after you?” Idle, curious question. It takes Dean a moment to parse. His jaw drops.

“What?” 

Sam lifts his chin, stubborn, deliberate: “Does he look after you.” His eyes glitter. The night plunges dark and alive. Dean feels pinned; hollowed out and stuck. It keeps coming to him and coming to him, when his mind is given room to wander, that his brother, left to his own devices, might want to – to touch him, lay hands. Stand in close.

It’s unthinkable. It’s supposed to be unthinkable. 

It’s been fucking him up for days now.

Sam pushes himself off the wall, steps forward.

“What are you doing? Stop,” Dean snaps, alarmed, straightening. “Don’t. Stop.” He throws up a hand, and Sam freezes in his crossing, looming, three feet distant. There’s a riot in Dean’s chest. He can barely breathe. “We’re on a _job_ , Sam. With fuckin _Mom_.”

Sam flinches, turns his head, angled down towards the parking lot, lips pressed tight, shoulders high and tense, all wound up. Dean’s heart thumps.

“Hey,” he says, tries to be gentle. Sam flinches again, sharp fracture of pain and breaks away without looking at him, striding towards the mouth of the alley; pulls up short as Mary appears. 

There’s a shotgun in her hand. Sodium light gold through her hair. 

“Boys,” she says, looking between them. Dean swallows. Sam’s shoulders break downwards. “It’s time.”

::

Dean slams to a stop a few spots down from their room and in the rearview sees Mary almost lose Sam, both of them lurching forwards against the front seat. She’s not strong enough to brace his weight. Sam gasps. Something thuds in the footwell.

Their legs tangle, trying to get Sam into the room before anyone sees, stumbling up the kerb and along the porch, Sam loose with pain, weak-kneed but trying to support himself and that just fucks them more. His one arm looped over Dean’s shoulder and the other out of action and Mary jammed alongside holding her balled-up shirt to his temple. When they get to the door she has to let go and Dean feels him wince and the blood start already, just in the thirty seconds it takes her to wrench open the door and shove at the bedcovers so Dean can lower him down, his own back screaming at the angle. He hisses, grits his teeth against the pain.

She presses the shirt back to Sam’s temple, not so quick that Dean didn’t see how much it was soaked, how dark. Panic flutters high in his chest, beats into white-out fear. Sam’s jacket is in ribbons, his shirt stained. There’s too much hair, blood. He can’t see-- he can’t see Sam’s ear.

“I think-- hospital,” Dean says, hollow down to his core, sick, out of this depth, “maybe--”

Mary sucks in a breath, looks at him from where she’s crouched over his brother. Direct, grave. “There was a lot of property damage, Dean. The fire. We barely beat the sirens.”

“So he just bleeds out?”

“I’m okay,” Sam croaks, trying to elbow her away. 

“I’m not saying that,” she says. Sober, how is she so unmoved by this? “I’m saying, let’s assess.”

“ _Assess_ , fuck,” Dean mutters, feeling around the back of Sam’s head for anything soft, more open skin, any other – his brain conjures disaster, a fractured skull, jutting glass, hollows, more treacherous wet, but all his fingers find are tangles and Sam’s usual hard head, thank God. Thank _God._

“I’m _okay_ ,” Sam says, wincing, ducking, twisting from under. “What about--”

Dean taps Mary’s wrist and she lifts the shirt, gingerly; he parts Sam’s hair and Sam’s ear is okay, attached, and there’s gore but no bone, no flaps of skin and he quakes with relief, thankfulness; presses the back of his hand to his forehead, hard till it hurts, breathes in, _get your shit together_ ; looks up at Mary. Nods. “Okay.”

She nods back. “We should move into the bathroom. This is going to be messy.”

Dean shakes his head. “Too small, no light--”

“Is Mom okay? Did it get you?”

“--grab the towels, though?” She nods and he takes over holding the shirt. Pulls it back. Tries to lift some of the hair away.

“Dean you were drowning--”

“And water,” he calls. Sam jerks his head away. “Fuck,” Dean mutters, grabs at his jaw, slippery with blood. “Stop.”

“What’s wrong, why won’t you--”

“Hey.” Dean ducks to catch his eye, rolling wild. “I’m fine. I’m not drowning. Mom’s fine. You’re a goddamn slaughterhouse, Sammy. Cooperate. Okay?”

Sam blinks at him, swallows. Tries a smile, lips pale, tremulant. “Okay.”

“How are you feeling?”

“My hand--” Sam bares his teeth. 

“I think you broke about fifteen fingers,” Dean says. “That’s my medical opinion. Are you going to chuck?”

“No.”

“Okay, lift up.”

He gets an arm behind Sam’s shoulders and lifts so Mary can stack pillows, shove a towel underneath but Sam, trying to help, shifts in the opposite direction, a deadweight turning, yanking pain up Dean’s back. His knee collapses and hits the carpet.

“ _Fuck_. Fuck, Sam, I can’t-- here, hold this,” Dean says, and Sam stretches a big clumsy hand up, across his body; grabs at the shirt. Dean shoves his other arm underneath and lifts and Mary gets the towel straight.

“It hit my head?” Sam says. He pulls the shirt away and stares at it. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Yet,” Dean says. Mary presses something clean and white against his temple.

“It threw you right through a cabinet,” she says. The memory turns Dean’s stomach. Sam sprawled amongst wreckage. Holding a shard in his hand, staring at it. _Dean_? he’d said, and looked at him. Dean had seen the blood start, before the water rose in his lungs.

“Hey,” Sam says. Drops the ruined shirt. Claps Dean’s cheek, wet – blood-wet, stench of iron – and keeps it there like he’s trying to hold on. Dark and serious. “I’m okay.”

Deans eyes burn and he closes them, tight. Nods in the dark, feels Sam’s hand move with him, stretched across his face. “I know.” 

“Are you breathing okay?” Sam’s asked a few times now. This is the first he’s sounded awake enough to remember and believe the answer. Dean looks at him.

“I’m breathing fine. It stopped the second Mom burned the diary.” He can still taste the river, feel the grit in his teeth; doesn’t have to go far to find the panic of drowning, still sparking and alive in his nerves, but he’s clear. He’s safe. He’s not the one to worry about. He pulls back, lets Sam’s hand drop away, and looks up. Mary’s watching them. “Mom, can you get some ice? And there’s more gauze in the trunk.” He takes over holding the cloth to Sam’s head, and she stands up and grabs the keys off the table. “Hey, and there should be a sling, too.”

“Got it.” 

The door opens and shuts behind him. Dean pulls the new thing – a tank, their mother’s – away and bends in close. The bleeding has slowed to nothing.

“Okay, this is gonna get painful. You can punch me if you like.”

“I’ll take that under, ah.” Sam winces. “We got anything?”

Dean leans back, digs through his open bag, cracks a lid off a fifth of Jack and holds the bottle out. Sam’s right hand is sprayed with tiny cuts and has at least one broken finger. His left does okay for bottle service. “Be responsible.”

Sam grunts and drinks deep, head tipped back, throat working. Dark red train tracks running below his collar. There’s a shallow cut skirting his windpipe, rubies beaded, already fixing itself. Nothing in the scheme of things. Christ, it could have been bad.

The door: Mary, juggling a bag of ice, sling and gauze jammed under her arm. She pauses at the foot of the bed. “Whiskey?” She sounds dubious. “Is he concussed?”

“He’s not concussed.”

Sam breaks away from the bottle, panting, wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “I’m fine.”

“But he shouldn’t-- he’s woozy,” she says, wrapping the ice in a pillowcase. “He’s repeating himself. If he’s--”

“I know him concussed,” Dean snaps. “He was just a little loopy for a second, so unless you’ve got some whizz-bang Men of Letters kit--” She shakes her head, grim. “Okay then. Sam, hold out your hand, it’s swelling.”

She hauls one of the bags up to bed for extra height, rests Sam’s hand on it, lays the ice across his fingers. Sam hisses.

“I’m gonna have to shave some of your hair. Mom, scissors?”

Handles slap into his palm. “I’ve got a razor in my--”

“No, my bag,” he says. “End pocket.” She disappears and he hears the zipper, tries not to think of her rifling through his shampoo and condoms. He leans in close, probing at Sam’s scalp. All this freaking hair.

“Sorry,” Sam whispers. There’s a puff of air on Dean’s cheek, booze smell. 

“Shh,” he murmurs, snipping through a clotted matt, trying to follow the cut. “Let me concentrate or you’re gonna end up ugly. Even uglier.”

“Can’t have that,” Sam says. Takes another swig.

About four inches long, when he’s fully revealed it. Straight, from his temple to his ear. Mary has a jug of water and something else clean for him to ruin, dabbing along the wound, while she holds Sam’s hair back. Sam is hurting, but quiet about it. Still, when Dean reaches for the razor, he ducks away, tips his head back in another deep gulp. Seems to feel the question in Dean’s pause and sets the bottle on the floor and grunts: _get on with it_.

Dean gets on with it. Shears a path along Sam’s scalp and gifts him nine stitches, end to end, without stopping. Fresh blood while he does it and between that and Dean sweating the needle gets slippery fast. Sam has his good hand locked into the meat of Dean’s thigh. It’s the tug and tie he hates the most, Dean knows from sore experience; could tell even if he didn’t already know, from the bruises Sam’s leaving.

“Done,” he says, and Sam squeezes one last time and drops his hand with a sigh. “There.” Reaches for the Jack, swishes a mouthful around, lets it burn. Straightens up from his hunch, wincing, and drags his face across his sleeve. His eyes ache, exhaustion looming. His back feels frozen in a c-curve. Silt grinds between his teeth. His throat remembers the water, swollen and sore.

“Okay,” he says, sandpaper. “Nearly there.”

Mary takes his elbow. “Let me do the splint,” she says. “Go and wash up--”

“I got it.”

“Your hands are--”

“I _got_ it.”

“Dirty hands make dirty dressings,” she says, sharp, and Dean swears under his breath and steps back. Sam’s eyebrows climb up his face.

“I’m just washing up,” he says. “Keep that ice on, keep it high.”

The bathroom. In the mirror he looks like a nightmare, huge red smear across one cheek. Sam’s handprint. His eyes are mad, overbright. He washes his hands, washes his face. There’s nothing clean, nothing to dry on, why is nothing ever _clean_?

His fingers curl into fists on the sink. He could pull it off the wall, probably. The violence of it builds, the pressure. He’d have to put his back into it. He might put himself out of commission. That might be good.

He’s not finished. 

He breathes. Looks up. There’s a scrim of dried blood around the edge of his face. He’s alive. Sam’s alive.

“So,” he hears his mother say, tired edge, forcing humour. “Is this the way it always is for you boys?” 

“Uh, this was a pretty, um. Bad one,” Sam says. His words blur into each other. “I’m not usually. I’m usually a bit more…” He fades out. In the room he’s dutifully elevating his arm, left hand supporting his right elbow. He’s taken his jacket off, somehow, and his shirt. The ice bag has disappeared. He looks dopey, false booze colour in his cheeks. Jesus, how much did he drink? And then there were – hadn’t there been a handful of pills at some point, in that twenty-minute dash back? How long ago was that, half an hour? An hour?

Sam’s watching their mother bag used-up towels, clothes that can’t be saved, tissues, gauze. Her back to them. There’s blood in her hair, the curls hanging lank. It’s streaked up her arms. Dark on her t-shirt, her jeans. Sam’s mouth pulls down, a defeated guilty line. 

“Normally it’s just me who gets his ass kicked,” Dean says, stepping back in. Mary throws a smile at him, over her shoulder.

“I noticed. How’s your back?”

“Good as new. Hey,” he says, quiet, bending down to Sam, takes his wrist. Pulse steady. “Let me check your head.” Fingers light on Sam’s jaw, his crown, tilting. Few dots of fresh blood but nothing major. Passable job, but it looks like someone’s been rummaging around in his brain. “Couple of bolts in your neck and you could play Frankenstein.”

Sam’s eyes drag to him; he licks his lips. He’d be tasting blood. “He’s not called--”

“I know,” Dean says, soft. Pauses. “I shouldn’t have let you drink. You’re a mess.”

Sam snorts. “You’re telling me.”

“You ready for round two?”

“Born ready,” he says. Gives Dean a sloppy grin. Mouth slack, bitten. “Hit me.”

“Tape,” Mary says, from the table where she’s sorting the kit. “Heads up,” and tosses it. Dean grabs it out the air and sits on the bed by Sam’s hip, knee crooked, shoving the duffel out the way. Accepts her follow-up of a couple of wooden coffee stirrers as she passes. There’s a toiletries bag in her hand and a question on her face.

“Go for it,” Dean says, nods at the bathroom. “We’re good.”

“I’m sorry it went like this.”

“That’s the job,” Dean says, and she nods, grips Sam’s shoulder and Sam reaches up, pats the back of her hand. 

She hesitates on the threshold, looking at them, fingers wrapped around the jamb. Smeared mascara in the creases of her eyes and lank hair. There’s a silence, drawn out, and he realises he’s waiting for her to go.

“You know, your father--” she starts, scratchy, tired; loses her way. Her lips press shut. She sags from exhaustion, dissipates, pale and unreal. Fades through the doorway. 

The door locks behind her. 

Dean puts his back to it and turns his attention to his brother. Sam is staring down at his busted hand.

“You want me to put on the TV?” Dean says. “Bit of distraction?”

Sam shakes his head, sets his jaw. “Let’s just get it over with.”

Dean takes his hand, feels him stiffen. His fingers are hot around the break, red; still finger-shaped though, and pointing in the right direction. Dean can’t tell what’s happening inside. If the bones are in pieces. It’s fucked. Why is his whole life run on guesswork?

Sam would say lucky it was just broken bones. Lucky nothing else cut too deep. Lucky his ear was intact. Dean gets lost, strung out, trying to calculate: if Sam had been concussed, would that still be good luck? If he’d lost the finger, should Dean be thankful? Where does it end, the tallying? Sam thrown through glass, dragged across pavement, tossed into a car, stitched up in this cramped doll’s house of a room, having to bluntly endure; _this_ is what he’s supposed to be grateful for?

And he is, that’s the thing. He’s so fucking grateful. Every single time.

Pipes groan; their mother turning taps. Sam’s good fingers twitch against his palm. Dean’s been holding his brother’s hand a while now. He breathes and looks up.

“Can’t believe you let yourself get beat up by a fourteen-year-old girl,” he says. Sam rolls his eyes, mouth moving, discontent. 

“Can’t wait for the day when you’re funny. Where’d the bottle go?”

“You get one more shot, use it wisely.” Dean puts it in his hand. “And I’m always funny.”

“I’m gonna be old and grey. No teeth left.”

“Oh, so next Tuesday?” He picks up the tape and digs around for the cut end, pulls it and sticks it in his mouth.

Sam looks at him, blinking slow, dim, worn down to nothing. “Years,” he says. “Years and years and years.” He sighs, slumps back against the pillows, mumbles down at the bedspread. “I’m tired.”

“I know,” Dean says, distorted around the tape. “It’s nearly over. Straighten out as much as you can, here, okay?”

Sam grimaces, takes a drink. Not too big. Lets Dean set his fingers against the splints. It’s quiet. Rasp of the tape. Shower going behind them. White highway noise and the murmur of next door’s TV.

“You think we’ll be in the bunker?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Don’t see why not.”

“You think you’ll start bringing people back there?”

“No.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, dull. “Guess we’ll see.”

“Hold these together if you can.” Dean pinches the splinted fingers together, careful, starts buddy taping. Chews on his lip. “You know, you. You got options, Sam. Eileen, whatever.”

Sam scrubs his good hand over his face. “Spare me.”

“Some stuff you don’t get a second chance at.” Dean swallows, eyes on his work. “It could be a whole life. You could go have. A million little hunter nerd kids.”

Sam shakes his head. Says, ground down, at his limit: “It’s just gonna be me sitting in the library waiting for you to come home, Dean. Let’s not pretend I’m anything bigger than that.”

Dean bends down to his hands and bites the tape, smooths the end. Sits up and looks his brother dead on. Lopsided, one half of his hair ruffled and big, the other thin now, hanging over the shorn path. His pupils are blown, one eye bloodshot and the skin around puffy. Patchwork smears of blood. Only the millionth time Dean’s seen him like this, banged up to shit. He’s always the best thing Dean’s laid eyes on. 

“Sitting in the library?” Dean says. Tries to bite down a smile, something heavy building in his chest, sore and overfond. “In the dark?”

Sam frowns at him, fuzzy, pulls his hand from Dean’s grip. “Don’t make fun.”

“Listening to The Cure?”

It wounds his brother’s dignity. He screws up his face. “It’s not a joke.”

“I know,” Dean says. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.” 

Dean nods. Rasps his palm along his stubble, awkward. “Maybe it’s not gonna be like that,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be.”

Sam looks at him, uncertain. “How’s it maybe gonna be?”

Dean swallows. 

“Better than that,” he says. Curling rising nervousness. He’s lightheaded. “A lot. A lot better, I think. Whatever you want it to be,” and Sam narrows his eyes, lifts his hand and lets it fall, land solid and settled on Dean’s thigh.

“Yeah?” he says, quiet.

“Yeah,” Dean says, shaky. Sam’s fingers tighten. In the room behind him their mother is moving, taps and pipes squealing, turning off the water, and it makes him queasy. “Let’s. Sam, hey. Not here. Let’s see if you live through the night, first.”

“Are you for real?” 

“Yeah,” Dean says. Coughs. “I know. But not. Come on, you’ve got too many pillows, scoot down. You need to sleep this off before the pain kicks in. It’s not gonna be a fun morning. No, don’t, don’t turn over you’ll, hey, come back.”

Sam collapses onto his back and sighs, rubs his face. “Jesus, Dean. I can’t sleep like this.”

He sounds exhausted, murky, words slurring together. Dean presses his lips closed on a smile. Checks his watch; it’s past three, and feels later. “I know,” he says, and puts a hand on Sam’s chest, pushes himself up. “But you have to.”

Sam’s good hand grabs at him, slides down, curls around his wrist, drops away. “Where are you going?”

“You wanna sleep with your boots on?” Dean tugs them off and pulls the blanket up, does a quick circuit of the room, cleaning up his gear. Puts a bottle of water on the bedside table. Shoves the table into the corner and sets up the cot under the window, less than a foot between it and the bed. His mother emerges, towelling her hair, cloud of steam following her, as he’s putting the pillow down.

“Thanks,” she says. Sounds a little closer to normal. He nods.

“No problem,” he says. Occupies himself with grabbing a chair, lifting it over to the other side of the bed. They dance around each other. She sits on the cot. The springs howl.

“How is he?”

“Fine,” he says. Darts a glance at Sam. He’s pretending to be asleep, blanket pulled high, face slack. Nice try, but Dean knows when he’s cheating. “He’ll be fine.” Sits on the chair, shuffling down to put his feet up on the bedside table. The lamp shudders, light swaying. Sam’s eyes shine at him, a crack under his eyelids. Dean folds his arms. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” she says, after a moment.

Sam shuts his eyes.

::

The morning dawns with a clear grey light that turns strong and yellow, early. Sam wakes at eight. Their mother is snoring, springs on her cot squeaking. It’s going to be a warm day.

Sam blinks up at him, hazy. His lips are dry, chapped. Dean’s still in his chair. He’s been watching him, his eyes moving under his eyelids, his frowns. Tracking his flinches, his small gasps. He’d roused him twice to check his pupils and make him drink water, check his pulse, still beating strong. Check his stitches, patch of scalp showing stark and white, bare for the first time in decades.

Sam licks his lips. “I had a dream,” he whispers, croaky with sleep. Goes to knuckle at the corner of his eye and winces as his fingers try to bend. Rubs with the heel of his hand instead. 

Dean’s heart turns in his chest. There’s just no end to the ways he loves his brother.

“Yeah?” he murmurs.

Sam nods. “I was driving, and I drove the car right into the river. It went under but I guess it was sealed pretty well so we could still breathe. We were dry. But we just kept sinking.”

Dean raises an eyebrow, props his chin in his hand. “Did I murder you?”

“No.”

“Unrealistic,” he says. Pictures it, Sam and him, in the car, waters rising, the light dim and muddy, soft. Turning to each other. “Then what happened?”

Sam grins at him, wide, sly, shining. 

Dean grins back.

::

The end. 

**Author's Note:**

> PS: 1 John 2:10 is _Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light_ and if you think Sam doesn’t know that then may I also interest you in this nice little bridge.
> 
> Feedback/concrit welcome.
> 
> [Rebloggable tumblr link](http://nigeltde-fic.tumblr.com/post/180481439921/a-lifetime-or-two-13934-words-by-nigeltde) for those so inclined.


End file.
